Critical Mass

Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466806834
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
Are there any "laws of nature" that influence the ways in which humans behave and organize themselves? In the seventeenth century, tired of the civil war ravaging England, Thomas Hobbes decided that he would work out what kind of government was needed for a stable society. His approach was based not on utopian wishful thinking but rather on Galileo's mechanics to construct a theory of government from first principles. His solution is unappealing to today's society, yet Hobbes had sparked a new way of thinking about human behavior in looking for the "scientific" rules of society. Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte, and John Stuart Mill pursued this idea from different political perspectives. Little by little, however, social and political philosophy abandoned a "scientific" approach. Today, physics is enjoying a revival in the social, political and economic sciences. Ball shows how much we can understand of human behavior when we cease to try to predict and analyze the behavior of individuals and instead look to the impact of individual decisions-whether in circumstances of cooperation or conflict-can have on our laws, institutions and customs. Lively and compelling, Critical Mass is the first book to bring these new ideas together and to show how they fit within the broader historical context of a rational search for better ways to live.

Critical Mass

Author: Daniel Suarez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593183649
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Book Description
In New York Times bestselling author Daniel Suarez's latest space-tech thriller, a group of pioneering astropreneurs must overcome never-before-attempted engineering challenges to rescue colleagues stranded at a distant asteroid—kicking off a new space race in which Earth's climate crisis could well hang in the balance. When unforeseen circumstances during an innovative—and unsanctioned—commercial asteroid-mining mission leave two crew members stranded, those who make it back must engineer a rescue, all while navigating a shifting web of global political alliances and renewed Cold War tensions. With Earth governments consumed by the ravages of climate change and unable to take the risks necessary to make rapid progress in space, the crew must build their own nextgen spacecraft capable of mounting a rescue in time for the asteroid's next swing by Earth. In the process they'll need to establish the first spin-gravity station in deep space, the first orbiting solar power satellite and refinery, and historic infrastructure on the moon's surface—all of which could alleviate a deepening ecological, political, and economic crisis back on Earth, and prove that space-based industry is not only profitable, but possibly humanity's best hope for a livable, peaceful future.

Critical Mass

Author: Chris Carlsson
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 9781902593593
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Documenting 10 years of fun, radical, spontaneous bicycle demonstrations that challenge the autocentric world.

Critical Mass

Author: James Wolcott
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767930630
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Book Description
James Wolcott’s career as a critic has been unmatched, from his early Seventies dispatches for The Village Voice to the literary coverage made him equally feared and famous to his must-read reports on the cultural weather for Vanity Fair. Bringing together his best work from across the decades, this collection shows Wolcott as connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and necessary naysayer. We begin with “O.K. Corral Revisited,” Wolcott’s career-launching account of the famed Norman Mailer–Gore Vidal dust-off on the original Dick Cavett Show. He goes on to consider (or reconsider) the towering figures of our culture, among them Lena Dunham Patti Smith, Johnny Carson, Woody Allen, and John Cheever. And we witness his legendary takedowns, which have entered into the literary lore of our time. In an age where a great deal of back scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, Critical Mass offers a bracing taste of the real thing.

Critical Mass

Author: Mead Art Museum (Amherst College)
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813533032
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Description: Puts New Jersey at the center of key art movements during the sixties

Critical Mass

Author: Dinur Blum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000467597
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 98

Book Description
This book examines social patterns in 2,000 mass shootings in the United States between 2013 through 2020. While mass shootings are often described as psychological, the authors show that there are social factors that produce the anger needed to commit a mass shooting. These factors are fairly common and can be addressed to stem the anger earlier. The factors include chronic poverty, sudden unemployment, relationship problems, domestic violence, social isolation, and alcohol. Common social strains can metastasize and be lethally dangerous. By understanding the social factors, we can reduce the anger and frustration people feel that would drive them to killing others.

Critical Mass

Author: Sara Paretsky
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101636505
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski “is at her stubborn, reckless, compassionate best in this complicated page-turner about selfish secrets passed down through generations” (Booklist). In 1939, Dr. Lotty Herschel, V. I. Warshawki’s closest friend in Chicago, escaped the Holocaust in Vienna with her childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. Though the two drifted and animosities grew between them over the years, when Kitty’s daughter finds her life in danger, she turns to Lotty for help. In turn, Lotty summons V. I. to take the case. The threats on the daughter’s life at first seem a simple case of bad drug dealings, but V. I. soon discovers that they are just the tip of an iceberg of lies secrets and silence whose origins trace back to the deadly race among America, Germany, Japan, and England to develop the atomic bomb. And while the secrets may be old, the people who continue to guard them will do anything to make sure they stay buried...

Critical Mass

Author: Carter Plymton Hydrick
Publisher: Jiffyline
ISBN: 9780975985311
Category : Atomic bomb
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The True Story of the Manhattan Project you haven't heard. On May 19, 1945, eleven days after the surrender of Nazi Germany in Europe, a U-boat was escorted into Portsmouth Naval Yard, New Hampshire. News reporters covering the surrender of U-234 were ordered, contrary to all previous and late Why the tight security? Buried in the nose of the mammoth boat, sealed in cylinders lined with gold, was 560 kilograms, 1,120 pounds, of enriched uranium oxide labeled U235-the fissile material from which atom bombs are made. Following ten years of research, author Carter Hydrick presents documentation that demonstrates surrendered German components from U-234 were used by the Manhattan Project to complete both the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the plutonium bomb d

Critical Mass

Author: Steve Martini
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780747260622
Category : Adventure stories
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
Joss Cole, a burned out public defender from LA, has opted for a quieter life in Washington State. Then into her office walks Dean Belden in search of a lawyer to help him set up a business. Within days Belden appears before a federal grand jury and, just minutes before testifying, he is killed. Meanwhile, Gideon van Ry, a nuclear fission expert in California, is troubled by the failure to account for two nuclear devices missing from the former Soviet Union. Under a false bill of lading, they were shipped to a company called Belden Electronics, and Gideon's only lead is the lawyer who incorporated Belden Electronics - Joss Cole...

Critical Mass

Author: William E. Burrows
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9780671748951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

Book Description
Third World superweapon proliferation is more frightening than the cold war arms race. This new arms race is a genocidal contest, fueled by hatred and meant to settle old racial, ethnic, and religious scores.